use strict;
use warnings;

my $s = "Hello, I am a perl/mysql programmer, but am self taught so I do not know all the awesome features Perl has, however, I am ok at it though, I guess.";

my $s2;
for (split /\s+/, $s) {
    $s2 .= "$_ ";
    last if length($s2) > 100;
}
print $s2;

__END__

Hello, I am a perl/mysql programmer, but am self taught so I do not know all the awesome features Perl